Lafferty, RA - SS - Continued on the Next Rock.pdf - R A Lafferty - przemosta

CONTINUED ON NEXT

ROCK

R. A. Lafferty

Up in the Big Lime country there is an upthrust, a chimney rock that is half fallen against a newer hill. It is

formed of what is sometimes called Dawson Sandstone and is interlaced with tough shell. It was formed

during the glacial and recent ages in the bottomlands of Crow Creek andGreen River when these streams

(at least five times) were mighty rivers.

“The chimney rock is only a little older than mankind, only a little younger than grass. Its formation had

been upthrust and then eroded away again, all but such harder parts as itself and other chimneys and

blocks. A party of five persons came to this place where .the chimney rock had fallen against a newer

hill. The people of the party did not care about the deep limestone below: they were not geologists. They

did care about the newer hill (it was man-made) and they did care a little about the rock chimney; they

were archeologists. Here was time heaped up, bulging out in casing and accumulation, and not in line

sequence. And here also was striated and banded time, grown tail, and then shat-tered and broken.

The five party members came to the site early in the afternoon, bringing the working trailer down a dry

creek bed. They unloaded many things and made a camp there. It wasn’t really necessary to make a

Page 1

camp on the ground. There was a good motel two miles away on the highway; there was a road along

the ridge above. They could have lived in comfort and made the trip to the site in five minutes every

morning. Terrence Burdock, however, be-lieved that one could not get the feel of a digging unless he

lived on the ground with it day and night. The five persons were Terrence Burdock, his wife Ethyl,

Robert Derby, and Howard Steinleser: four beauti-ful and balanced people. And Magdalen Mobley who

was neither beautiful nor .balanced. But she was electric; she was special. They rouched around in the

formations a little after they had made camp and while there was still light. All of them had seen the

formations before and had guessed that there was promise in them. “That peculiar fluting in the broken

chimney is almost like a core sample,” Terrence said, “and it differs from the rest of it. It’s like a lightning

bolt through the whole length. ‘It’s already exposed for us. I believe we will re-move the chimney

entirely. It covers the perfect access for the slash in the mound, and it is the mound in which we are really

interested. But we’ll study the chimney first. It is so available for study.”

“Oh, I can tell you everything that’s in the chimney,” Magdalen said crossly. “I can tell you everything

that’s in the mound too.”

‘P wonder why we take the trouble to dig if you already know what we will find,” Ethyl sounded archly.

“I wonder too,” Magdalen grumbled. “But we will need the evidence and the artifacts to show. You can’t

get ap-propriations without evidence and artifacts. Robert, go kill that deer in the brush about forty yards

northeast of the chimney. We may as well have deer meat if we’re living primitive.”

“This isn’t deer season,” Robert Derby objected. “And there isn’t any deer there. Or, if there is, it’s

down in the draw where you couldn’t see it. And if there’s ‘one there, it’s probably a doe.”

“No, Robert, it is a two-year-old buck and a very big’ one. Of course it’s in the draw where I can’t see

it. Forty yards northeast of the chimney would have to be in the draw. If I could see it, the rest of you

could see it too. Now go kill it! Are you a man or a mus microtus? Howard, cut poles and set up a tripod

to string and dress the deer on.”

“You had better try the thing, Robert,” Ethyl Burdock said, “or we’ll have no peace this evening.”

Robert Derby took a carbine and went northeastward of the chimney, descending into the draw at forty

yards. There was the high ping of the carbine shot. And after some moments, Robert returned with a

curious grin. “You didn’t miss him, Robert, you killed him,” Mag-dalen called loudly. “You got him with a

good shot through the throat and up into the brain when he tossed his head high like they do. Why didn’t

you bring him? Go back and get him!”

“Get him? I couldn’t even lift the thing. Terrence and Howard, come with me and we’ll slash it to a pole

and get it here somehow.”

“Oh Robert, you’re out of your beautiful mind,” Mag-dalen abided. “It only weighs a hundred ‘and

ninety pounds. Oh, I’ll get it.”

Magdalen Mobley went and got the big buck. She brought it back, carrying it listlessly across her

shoulders and getting herself bloodied, stopping sometimes to ex-amine rocks and kick them with her

foot, coming on easily with her load. It looked as if it might weigh two hundred and fifty pounds; but if

Magdalen said it weighed a hundred and ninety, that is what it weighed. Howard Steinleser had out poles

‘and made a tripod. He knew better ‘than not to. They strung ‘the buck up, skinned it off, ripped up its

belly, drew lit, and worked it over in an almost professional manner. “Cook it. Ethyl,” Magdalen said.

Later, as they sat on the ground around the fire and it had turned dark. Ethyl brought the buck’s brains

to Magdalen, messy and not half cooked, believing that she was playing an evil trick. And Magdalen ate

Page 2

them avidly. They were her due. She had discovered the buck. If you wonder how Magdalen knew what

invisible things were where, so did the other members of the party always wonder.

“It bedevils me sometimes why I am the only one to notice the analogy between historical geology and

depth psychology,” Terrence Burdock mused .as they grew lightly profound around the campfire. “The

isostatic principle applies to the mind and the under-mind as well as it does to the surface and

undersurface of the earth. The mind has its erosions and weatherings going on along with its deposits and

accumulations. It also has its upthrusts and its stresses. It floats on a similar magma. In extreme cases it

has its volcanic eruptions and its mountain build-ing.”

“And it has its glaciations,” Ethyl Burdock said, and perhaps she was looking at her husband in the dark.

“The mind has its hard sandstone, sometimes trans-muted to quartz, or half transmuted into flint, from the

drifting and floating sand of daily events. It has its shale from the old mud of daily ineptitudes and inertias.

It has limestone out of its more vivid experiences, for lime is the remnant of what was once animate: and

this limestone may be true marble if it is the deposit of rich enough emotion, or even travertine if it has

bubbled sufficiently through agonized and evocative rivers of the under-mind. The mind has its sulphur

and its gemstones” Terrence bubbled on sufficiently, and Magdalen cut him off. “Say .simply that we

have rocks in ‘our ‘heads,” she said. “But they’re random rocks, I tell you, and the same ones keep

coming back. It isn’t the same with us as it is with the earth. The world gets new rocks all the time. But

it’s the same people who keep turning up, and the same minds. Damn, one of the samest of them just

turned up again! I wish he’d leave me alone. The answer is still no.” Very often Magdalen said things that

made no sense. Ethyl Burdock assured herself that neither her husband, nor Robert, nor Howard, had

slipped over to Magdalen in the dark. Ethyl was jealous of the chunky and surly girl.

“I am hoping that this will be as rich as Spiro Mound,” Howard Steinleser hoped. “It could be, you

know. I’m told that there was never a less prepossessing site than that, or a trickier one. I wish we had

.someone who ‘had dug at Spiro.”

“Oh, he dug at Spiro,” Magdalen said with contempt. “He? Who?” Terrence Burdock asked. “No one

of us was at Spiro. Magdalen, you weren’t even ‘born yet when that mound was opened. What could

you know about it?” “Yeah, I remember him at Spiro,” Magdalen said, “always turning up his own things

and pointing them out.” “Were you at Spiro?” Terrence suddenly asked a piece of the darkness. For

some time, they had all been-vaguely aware that there were six, and not five, persons around the fire.

“Yeah, I was at Spiro,” the man said. “I dig there. I dig at a lot of the digs. I dig real well, and I always

know when we come to something that will be important. You give me a job.”

“Who are you?” Terrence asked him. The man was pretty visible now. The flame of the fire seemed to

lean toward ‘him as if he compelled it.

“Oh, I’m just a rich old poor man who keeps following and hoping and asking. There is one who is

worth it all forever, so I solicit that one forever. And sometimes I am other things. Two hours ago I was

the deer in the draw. It is an odd thing to munch one’s own flesh.” And the man was munching a joint of

the deer, unasked. “Him and ‘his damn cheap poetry!” Magdalen cried angrily.

“What’s your name?” Terrence asked him. “Manypenny. Anteros Manypenny is my name for-ever.”

“What are you?”

“Oh, just Indian. Shawnee. Choc, Creek, Anadarko, Caddo and pre-Caddo. Lots of things.” “How

could anyone be pre-Caddo?”

Page 3

“Like me. I am.”

“Is Anteros a Creek name?”

“No. Greek. Man, I am a going Jessie, I am one dig-ging man! I show you tomorrow.”

Man, he was one digging man! He showed them to-morrow. With a short-handled rose hoe he began

the gash in the bottom of the mound, working too swiftly to ‘be believed.

“He will smash anything that is there. He will not know what he comes to,” Ethyl Burdock complained.

“Woman, I will not smash whatever is there,” Anteros said. “You can hide a wren’s egg in one cubic

meter of sand. I will move all the sand in one minute. I will un-cover ‘the egg wherever it is. And I will not

crack the egg. I sense these things. I come now to a small pot of the proto-Plano period. It is broken, of

course, but I do not break it. It is in six pieces and they will fit together perfectly. I tell you this

beforehand. Now I reveal it.” And Anteros revealed it. There was something wrong about it even before

he uncovered it. But it was surely a find, and perhaps it was of the proto-Plano period. The six shards

came out. They were roughly cleaned and set. It was apparent that they would fit wonderfully.

“Why, it is perfect!” Ethyl exclaimed. “It is too perfect!” Howard Steinleser protested. “It was a turned

pot, and who had turned pots in America without the potter’s wheel? But the glyphs pressed into it do

correspond to proto-Plano glyphs. It is fishy.” Stein-leser was in a twitchy humor today and his face was

livid. “Yes, it is the ripple and the spinosity, the fish-glyph,” Anteros pointed out. “And the sun-sign is

riding upon it. It is fish-god.”

“It’s fishy in another way,” Steinleser insisted. “Nobody finds a thing like that in the first sixty seconds of

a dig. And there could not be such a .pot. I wouldn’t ‘believe it was proto-Plano unless points were

found in the exact site with it.”

“Oh here,” Anteros said. “One can smell the very shape of the flint points already. Two large points, one

small ‘one. Surely you get the whiff of them already? Four more hoe cuts and I come to ‘them.”

Four more hoe cuts, and Anteros did come to them. He uncovered two large points and ‘one .small one,

spear-heads and arrowhead. Lanceolate they were, with ribbon flaking. They were late Folsom, or .they

were proto-Plano; they were what you will.

“This cannot be,” Stemleser groaned. “They’re the missing chips, the transition pieces. They fill the

missing place too well. I won’t believe it. I’d hardly believe ‘it if mastodon bones were found on the same

level here.” “In a moment,” said Anteros, beginning to use the hoe again. “Hey, those old ‘beasts did

smell funny! An ele-phant isn’t in it with them. And a lot ‘of it still clings to their ‘bones. Will a sixth

‘thoracic bone do? I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I don’t know where the rest of the animal is.

Probably somebody gnawed the thoracic here. Nine hoe cuts, and then very careful.”

Nine hoe cuts and then Anteros, using a mason’s trowel, unearthed the old gnawed bone very carefully.

Yes, Howard said almost angrily, it was a sixth thoracic of a mastodon. Robert Derby said it was a fifth

or a sixth; it is not easy to tell.

“Leave the digging for a while, Anteros,” Steinleser said. “I want to record and photograph and take a

few measurements here.”

Terrence Burdock and Magdalen Mobley were work-ing at the bottom of the chimney rock, at the

Page 4

bottom of the fluting ‘that ran the whole height of it like a core sample.

“Get Anteros over here and see what he can uncover in sixty seconds,” Terrenoe offered. “Oh, him!

He’ll just uncover some of his own things.” “What do you mean, his own things? Nobody could have

made an intrusion here. It’s hard sandstone.” “And harder flint here,” Magdalen said. “I might ‘have

known it. Pass the damned thing up. I know just about what it says anyhow.”

“What it says? What do you mean? But it is marked!

And it’s large and dressed rough. Who’d carve in flint?” “Somebody real stubborn, just like flint,”

Magdalen said. “All right then, let’s have it out. Anteros! Get this out in one piece. And do it without

shattering it or tumbling the whole thing down on us. He can do it, you know, Terrence. He can do things

like that.” “What do you know about his doings, Magdalen? You never saw or heard about the poor

man till last night.” “Oh well, I know that it’ll turn out to be the same damned stuff.”

Anteros did get it out without shattering it ‘or bringing down the chimney column. A cleft with a digging

bar, three sticks of ‘the stuff and a cap, and he touched the leads to the battery when he was almost on

top of the charge. The blast, it sounded as if the whole sky were falling down on them, and some of those

sky-blocks were quite large stones. The ancients wondered why fallen pieces of the sky should always

be dark rock-stuff and never sky-blue clear stuff. The answer is that it is only pieces of the night sky that

ever fall, even though they may sometimes be most of the daytime in falling, such is the distance. And the

blast that Anteros set ‘off did bring down rocky hunks of the night sky even though it was broad daylight.

They brought down darker rooks than any of which the chimney was composed.

Still, it was a small blast. The chimney tottered but did not collapse. It settled back uneasily on its base.

And ‘the flint block was out in the clear.

“A thousand spearheads and arrowheads could be shattered and chipped out of that hunk,” Terrence

mar-veled. “That flint block would have ‘been a primitive for-tune for a primitive man.”

“I had several such fortunes,” Anteros said dully, “and this ‘one I preserved and dedicated.” “They had

all gathered around it.

“Oh the poor man!” Ethyl suddenly exclaimed. But she was not looking at any of the men. She was

looking at the stone.

“I wish he’d get off that kick,” Magdalen sputtered angrily. “I don’t care how rich he is. I can pick up

better stuff than him in the alleys.”

“What are the women chirping about?” Terrence asked. “But those do look like true glyphs. Almost like

Aztec, are they not, Steinleser?”

“Nahuat-Tanoan, cousins-german to the Aztec, or should I say cousins-yaqui?”

“Call it anything, but can you read it?” “Probably. Give me eight or ten hours ‘on it and I should come up

with a contingent reading of many of the glyphs. We can hardly expect a rational rendering of the

message, however. All Nahuat-Tanoan translations so far have been gibberish.”

“And remember, Terrence, that Steinleser is a slow reader,” Magdalen said spitefully. “And he isn’t very

good at ‘interpreting other signs either.” Steinleser was sullen and silent. How had his face come to bear

those deep livid claw-marks today? They moved a lot of rock and rubble that morning, took quite a few

Page 5

Lafferty, RA - SS - Continued on the Next Rock.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: